


Bright and Upcoming

by buddenbrooks



Category: VIXX, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fragrance Shop, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, gay angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buddenbrooks/pseuds/buddenbrooks
Summary: From a prompt: where Hakyeon owns a fragrance shop and Jungkook is his awkward teenage employee.





	Bright and Upcoming

[@plumeriarubra](https://tmblr.co/mcAoNsxvXvGxIhMNrWPhzEQ) Oh ooh prompt! Is group crossovers okay? For a while I’ve been thinking about an AU in which Hakyeon owns a candle/fragrance shop and jungkook is his seemingly reluctant part-time shopkeeper/cashier. JK actually really likes his line of work, but due to being teased about having a fragrance collecting hobby, refused to admit it. Hakyeon then proceeds to be Hakyeon and claim this as The Most Amazing Craft In The World while giving life advice to JK. Ends with a tutorial of DIY fragrant candles.

 

—————————

When Jungkook was seven - his brother will never let him forget - he crept into their parents’ bedroom one afternoon, snuck his chubby child’s hand into the most forbidden place of all (his mother’s dressing table) and took a bottle of her perfume. He didn’t know he was doing anything wrong, beyond taking something that wasn’t his, until his older brother found him in their shared room among a fog of powdery floral scent. He’d sprayed the perfume around so much that the knees of his jeans and the cuffs of his jumper were damp.

Junghyun, on shoving the door open, said a word he definitely wasn’t allowed to say, and pulled the neck of his shirt up around his nose.

“It stinks in here!” he shrieked, and then, his eyes narrowing in on Jungkook hunched figure on the bed, “it smells like mum - ew, Kookie, what are you doing?”

Jungkook just knelt there and stared at him, one damp hand clutching the square glass bottle and the thick scent of what he would later recognise as iris and jasmine cloying in his nostrils. When he licked his lower lip, he could only taste something bitter which made him want to retch, something which didn’t match at all with what he could smell.

His brother stared back at him, shaking his head. “You’re weird,” he said, and since he clearly had no idea what was going on, he shifted instinctively into a self-righteous pose, the one that meant he was going to mete out justice in the devastating way only an older sibling is capable of. “I’m telling.”

He got halfway down the hall before Jungkook tackled him around the knees. Both of them banged their heads; the perfume bottle - thrown aside in Jungkook’s haste - smashed against the bedside table, and Jungkook had to go to bed early every day that week, in a bedroom that reeked of his mother’s perfume.

It’s a story he’s never been allowed to live down. He’s certain that when he finally brings home his first girlfriend, Junghyun will trot the tale out and he’ll look like a freak who will end up living in an attic wearing his mother’s old clothes, and his first girlfriend will laugh at him and leave, and he’ll probably be a virgin forever. Still, he sort of thinks that’s preferable to admitting why he stole the perfume in the first place.

Junghyun always ends the story by asking, in a theatrically disbelieving sort of way, as if he hasn’t asked the same question fifty times without getting an answer, “God, Kookie, what were you even doing?”

And every time, Jungkook will mumble, “I dunno, just - mucking around,” or something to that effect, and bite his lip on the simple truth that he just really wanted to smell the way his mother did. It is weird, he knows it, and he probably will end up living in an attic wearing his mother’s old clothes, because what kid - what son - wants to smell like their mother?

It didn’t seem that strange when he was seven. Back then, all the boys and girls he knew smelled pretty much the same: like the washing powder their parents used on their school uniform; traces of mud; whatever flavour of squash they drank at lunch - simple, natural smells. Maybe, back then, he had some inkling that there was a reason his mother and father smelled different, from himself and from each other, but he didn’t quite realise that he didn’t get to choose which one he would end up with.

All he knew for certain was that his mother, and his aunts and grandmothers, smelled like flowers and the spices they used in their cooking, and those were smells which made him feel warm and happy and comfortable. His father, and his other male relations, smelled like wood fires, or like petrol, or tobacco smoke and an oily undertone he would later recognise as alcohol, and those smells didn’t make him feel so good.

When he could smell his mother’s smells, it meant dinner, smiles, and cuddles. When those heavy male scents entered the room it meant questions about his homework and whether he was behaving, and sometimes, especially when the woody tobacco smell of his grandfather appeared, it meant having to stand up and have his arms felt for their strength, and hearing his parents be lectured on how they should be raising him.

The perfume incident had been enough to stop him from borrowing his mother’s scents again, but it wasn’t until three years later that he understood why his brother had reacted the way he did. In the classroom one day, a gang of girls were passing around the latest issue of a teen magazine. It had a tiny scent sample glued to one page, which they were sharing out, taking dabs on their forefingers to pat behind their ears and at their wrists.

It was a warm day, and the heat of their pulse points sent the smell drifting back to Jungkook at the desk behind: sweet vanilla, peach and apple. He leaned forward to the girls, not yet old enough to feel awkward about it. “Can I smell it?”

Instead of holding her wrist out for him, the girl in the desk in front handed over the sample packet. “Isn’t it good?” Jungkook rubbed the last bit of scent on his own wrists and held them to his nose. Up close, the smell was heady and delicious, and a twinge of the memories from when he was seven gave him an extra illicit thrill.

The pleasure lasted all of eight seconds before the boys surrounding him noticed what he was doing. And Jungkook was lucky; he was big for his age, and good at sports, and generally well liked by the other kids, so he only had to live through one day of catcalling, of, “Jungkook’s wearing girl’s perfume! Are you a girl, Kookie? Are you going to wear a skirt tomorrow too?”

It could be worse, he knew that. There was a kid called Junho who got beaten up three times a week, because besides being short and nerdy, his mother had sent him to school on their first day wearing a flower-patterned anorak. The girls would screw their faces up and edge away if they were made to stand near him. The boys tripped him on the sports field and threw his stuff around in the playground. It could have ended up like that.

Instead, Jungkook begged for a toilet break halfway through maths and scrubbed the perfume off his wrist, and that was the last time he tried to take for himself those feminine scents he loved so much. He grew up, in that half hour between the start of the day and the moment where he stood  with dripping hands, staring himself down in the mirror. He grew up and realised that there are things which he would never be allowed. To him, that’s what has always defined being an adult: learning about, and accepting, that there are things which can’t ever be yours.

 

He still thinks about those scents, even if he can’t have them for himself. He thinks about them especially in summer, when everyone takes off a layer of clothing, and the pretty girls he notices so much more now he’s seventeen bare the tender napes of their necks, and the delicate insides of their wrists and knees. The air is heady with blossoming flowers, the sharp nostalgic tang baked out of the earth by the midday sun, and the mingling of a hundred different perfumes. It’s hard to walk down the street without stopping to take it all in. Even harder to listen to what his dad’s saying to him.

His dad, as always, smells of soap and a hint of petrol, and the oily alcoholic undertone of his aftershave. It’s not bad, only boring. It doesn’t stir Jungkook’s stomach the way the girl in the bubblegum pink top walking past him does. She smells like bubblegum too, and she catches his eye as she passes, blows a big pink bubble and winks. Jungkook’s breath catches in his throat.

Two steps ahead his dad clears his throat. “Are you listening to me?”

“Trust me dad, he didn’t get a word of that,” Junghyun says, grinning even as he cranes around to get his own look at the girl.

“Sorry dad.” Jungkook hurries forward to catch up, trying to shake some sense into his head. The air is so thick with scents it’s creeping in through his ears and fogging up his brain. “A job, right. I will, I’ll get one.”

“Sooner, rather than later. I don’t want you hanging around idle all summer. You’re old enough to start taking on more responsibility. Earning your own money is an important step in life, kid. There’s nothing like the pride that comes from money you honestly earned.”

Jungkook’s father is a small claims lawyer, so he doesn’t know how much of his money is earned honestly, but he doesn’t say this. Instead he glances into the windows of the shops they’re passing, like someone’s going to come out and offer him a job there and then. That would take a lot of hassle out of his life.

Instead all he sees are tall, good looking people, at least two years older than him and far better dressed, gazing coolly around as if the customers nearby are no concern of theirs. When he looks at these people, he understands why he, with his teen acne and unfashionable haircut, hasn’t had a single response to any of the CVs he’s handed in.

“I’m trying dad,” he says, cutting his gaze away from the windows when a young man with turquoise hair makes eye contact with him and frowns. “I’ve handed a bunch of CVs in, no one’s even asked me to interview. They just think I’m too - ” His dad wouldn’t understand him finishing that sentence with ‘lame’ so instead he says, “young,” and looks down at the scuffed trainers which used to belong to Junghyun.

“I had a job when I was two years younger than you are, and Junghyun didn’t have any trouble finding something, did you?”

Junghyun turns again with that mocking older brother grin. “Nope.”

Jungkook scowls back at him. Junghyun knows that he is and always has been bigger, better looking, and cooler in general than Jungkook. If he were a decent older brother he’d take Jungkook’s side against their dad, but instead he’s using it as a way to score points. Jungkook vows to delete all his high scores off the playstation when they get home.

“It’s all about perseverance and making a good impression, see? You can’t go in there slouching and mumbling like you always do. You’ve got to project confidence. You’re selling yourself, get it?” As if he doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, that he has one son who belongs in a high end boutique, and one who should be sold off the back of a truck, Jungkook’s dad stops right there in the middle of the street and throws an arm around Jungkook’s shoulders. Jungkook locks his knees together and tries not to squirm. “Confidence, kid, that’s the trick. Look.”

He points to a notice in the window of the shop they’ve stopped by: part time sales assistant needed; enquire inside.

“Now?” Jungkook squeaks. Handing CVs over to those tall, elegantly dressed people is humiliating enough without his dad and older brother watching from outside the window. His dad gives him a merciless pat on the back and then uses the same hand to shove him towards the door.

“Go on Kookie, you can do it. Chin up, project your voice, firm handshake. I’ll be right here watching.”

He says this as if it should be encouraging. Jungkook’s stomach does a sad, greasy flip, the burger he had for lunch threatening to make a reappearance. Junghyun grins in anticipation. The three steps up to the shop entrance feels more like a long, slow descent into hell. He only makes it inside with a final jab in the lower back from his asshole brother.

Once he’s inside, he freezes. Not out of fear, this time, but because in his panic he hadn’t even looked at what sort of a shop this is, and as soon as he steps inside it hits him.

Or rather, they hit him, they being the hundreds of different, delicate scents wafting in the breeze set by the ceiling fan. The shelves are lined with candles, oil burners, incense holders and tiny, sparkling bottles of scent. In the middle of the floor is a big round table, covered in a white cloth and pastel blue signs advertising a new perfume, which comes in a blue bottle shaped like a drop of water: 'The Scent of Summer’. Over on the front desk is a spherical humidifier, glowing pink and purple and green in turns as it releases its calming scents into the air.

Without meaning to, Jungkook sucks in a huge lungful of this glorious, replete air. For an instant he’s too full of scents to remember to panic. Then he opens his eyes again and sees his dad outside the window, waving his hand. The greasy sick feeling returns, and intensifies when the man behind the till looks up at him.

“Can I help at all?”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t sound disgusted to find Jungkook breathing the same air as him. He’d have every right to, because while Jungkook is a spotty teenager wearing supermarket brand deodorant, the shopkeeper looks the pinnacle of health and good living. He’s wearing a deep blue shirt without a crease on it, and his skin is visibly glowing. He gets up from his seat. Jungkook takes a step back.

It’s exactly the same rabbit in headlights feeling he’d got when his brother caught him with the perfume, except ten times worse because whatever he does now will end badly. The only thing he can do is choose the lesser of two evils, which is definitely to at least try to convince this man to give him a job. The worst he can say is no, Jungkook reminds himself, and he won’t have to listen to his dad being disappointed in him the whole way home.

He makes himself step forward again, edging around the perfume display and up to the desk. Confidence, he tells himself, and tries to set his shoulders back and his chin up. The shopkeeper looks like he’s trying to hide a smile.

“Hi, I - I came about the ad? In the window?”

“Oh, wonderful,” the shopkeeper says, the smile breaking out, and weirdly there’s not a hint of sarcasm in either his voice or his expression. He sounds like he really does think it’s wonderful that a gawky teenager has pitched up in his beautiful, fragrant shop to ask for a job. He puts out a hand, which Jungkook takes with maybe more force than he needs to. “I’m in a bit of a bind right now where staff’s concerned, I had someone go off travelling before she starts college, so it’s just been two of us for the last week. I’m Hakyeon.”

“Jeon Jungkook,” Jungkook says, keeping his back firmly to the window. From behind, he’s sure this looks impressive. He’s already shaking hands and introducing himself; this is certainly further than he’d got anywhere else. “I have a CV, in my - uh - ”

Even as he’s swinging his bag down to fish out the plastic folder his parents won’t let him leave home without, Hakyeon gestures it away. “Don’t worry about that, I don’t imagine you have much work experience anyway, do you?”

“I helped run a charity raffle at school once. And I was the sports equipment monitor last term.”

“So you have some experience organising stock,” Hakyeon says, with a twinkle which Jungkook feels might be laughing at him. He likes Hakyeon though, he’s already decided. He smells friendly: a bit of mint, a bit of green tea, with a twist of something citrus. He smells like the wooden chest Jungkook’s mother keeps all her herb teas in. It’s a refreshing smell, like a light rain on a hot day. “I won’t lie, this isn’t a difficult job. The main thing is that you enjoy talking to people.”

Every article Jungkook had read about landing your first job had banged on about being personable, and he’s pretty sure he is. He’s always been friends with nearly everyone in his class anyway. “Yeah, I do - I mean, it’s fun and - I’m, I work hard, too.”

Hakyeon smiles, lifting his eyebrows a touch, and with the scented breeze blowing around them and the gentle lights of the humidifier, there’s something magical about his appearance, as if his twinkling eyes are seeing right down into Jungkook’s past. As it’s no coincidence which brought him here ten years later. As if he’d put the notice up and has been expecting Jungkook ever since.

“Well?” his dad demands as he steps outside. “You were in there a while, did it go well?”

“I got the job,” Jungkook tells him. If his father looked through the window, saw Hakyeon with his beautiful glowing skin and the shelves and shelves of pretty, pleasant smelling products that Jungkook is going to be selling - well, he doesn’t mention it, and Jungkook walks home with a feeling half of fear, half of heady delight. The prospect of being around something he loves so much is exciting, but he still doesn’t think he should be so excited.

Whatever, he tries to tell himself. A job is a job. He just has to sell those things, not smother himself in them. It’s only for the summer.

 

He arrives at the shop at nine the next morning, as agreed. Hakyeon’s already there, in a peach coloured shirt today, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He spots Jungkook through the window and waves, gives one final tweak to the poster he’s arranging, and comes to unlock the door.

Jungkook made an effort to look good - he’d not had a choice, with his mum fussing around about his overgrown hair and his dad telling him repeatedly that, “appearance is nine tenths of the law,” - but he still feels grubby next to Hakyeon.

“Morning,” he says, and fidgets with his shirt collar to make sure it’s not sticking up at the back again.

“How are you?” Hakyeon steps aside to let him in, and Jungkook’s somewhat pleased to see that Hakyeon also stops for a second when he turns back into the shop, to take a deep breath of the air. Apparently it’s not something you get accustomed to. He’s less pleased when Hakyeon leans in a bit closer to him and takes another sniff.

“I showered, don’t worry.”

“I’m sure, but what with?” Hakyeon steps back, running his eyes over Jungkook’s figure. “It smells like you’re using something with alcohol in it. That can dry the skin out - we’ll find you something less harsh, it’ll help with your complexion as well.”

Jungkook feels his stomach twist. “You don’t have to,” he manages to mumble, and Hakyeon pops his eyebrows up in surprise for a brief moment before shrugging.

“It’s really no trouble. I’d like you to use the things we sell anyway, there’s really no better advertisement. But let’s get set up for the day before we get into all of that.”

He takes Jungkook around the shop, which doesn’t take long. There’s the main room, which he’s already seen; an adjoining hallway leading to a concrete-walled space which is crammed with cardboard boxes full of new stock; and a minuscule office, with just enough room for a computer, a kettle and a vertical stack of boxes of herbal tea bags.

“There’s no toilet, I’m afraid, but the coffee shop opposite lets me use theirs. I got this place cheap since next door expanded their property onto the site, but it does mean we’re a bit pressed for space. So we really have to be careful about being tidy. Which tea would you like?” He makes himself a green tea and Jungkook a mixed berry one, and they take their mugs back through to the main shop.

The girl in the pink top from yesterday is outside, bending down to examine the window display. Jungkook looks over, catches a brief glimpse of her cleavage and looks away, feelings his ears heat up. “Uh, you open at ten, right?”

“Right. We do get a lot of female customers in here,” Hakyeon says delicately. “It’s not a bad place for a young man to work.”

Young man. Jungkook likes that. It sounds a lot more dignified than 'teenager’, but nowhere near as scary as the 'practically an adult’ his parents like to use. It sounds like someone bright and upwardly mobile, with good things ahead of them. He can do this. Scents aside, he’s a young man with a job and he’s going to make this work.

As it turns out, it’s not hard to make it work. Hakyeon had been truthful when he’d said it was an easy job. On that first morning, Hakyeon has him in the cramped hallway, rearranging the boxes ready for a delivery the next day. He doesn’t know if he’s being eased in, or if this really is a priority, but he’s grateful for the chance to slowly get used to his settings, and the endlessly full air around him.

The few times he peers back into the shop, he always sees Hakyeon exchanging pleasantries with someone older and better dressed than Jungkook could ever hope to be. He starts to reconsider the offer of revising his hygiene routine, especially after the first hour of shifting boxes, when he realises that his off brand deodorant is starting to fail him. He’d been so preoccupied by the problem of navigating all those cool-looking grown ups who he wanted to hire him, that he forgot about all the grown ups he’d end up serving once he was hired. Hakyeon’s been good enough to take a chance on him. He at least wants to be a credit to him, and not disgust his potential customers.

The other thing that he notices on his brief glances out into the shop is how many more men visit than he’d expected.

The majority of customers are female: teenage girls giggling around flower-shaped perfume bottles; young smartly dressed women popping in on their lunch break to pick up their favourite face packs and lotions; mothers on their way to or from lunches, buying herbaceous, soothing scents to perfume their houses.

But there are men too: men who look just like Jungkook’s father and brother and cousins, and men who look like the slender, extravagantly dressed models he sees on the front of magazines, and men of all types in between. Some come in sheepishly and have to be walked through their purchase by Hakyeon, using a gentle voice and a discreet, tactful manner, as if naming a scent would be tantamount to describing a lewd sex act. Some of them, Hakyeon knows by name.

There’s a big muscular guy who comes in wearing the most fantastic coat, and his spectacles on a long chain like the old lady at Jungkook’s local library does, who spends nearly an hour choosing a cologne and ends up with something which costs more than Jungkook will earn for the whole fortnight. There’s a small man whose bleach blonde hair and ripped jeans make him look like a rockstar; he stands chatting with Hakyeon for ages before buying some scented bath products, one of which Jungkook’s pretty sure has glitter in it. There’s a very handsome man who kisses Hakyeon on the cheek to say hello and goes away with an assortment of skin products for his already flawless skin.

Jungkook’s standing in the open arch of the hallway, watching this man leave, when Hakyeon notices him. “Hey. Do you want to take a lunch break?”

Instinctively Jungkook pulls himself behind the archway, his heart thudding a little harder. Then he reminds himself that this is stupid: Hakyeon’s already seen him, and besides, he’s trying to be professional. He goes out into the main shop, hiding his sweating palms behind his back and trying to breathe through his mouth, so that the scented air doesn’t overwhelm him too much.

“Sure,” he says, through a cracking throat. Hakyeon’s eyebrows flicker down, like he’s trying to search out some hidden meaning in Jungkook’s single word answer.

“Have you been drinking enough while you’ve been hefting all that stuff around? Hydration is really important, especially for your skin. There’s a mini fridge under the desk with some bottled water in it, why don’t you grab one while I get us some lunch? What kind of sandwiches do you like?”

Hakyeon talks for so long, and with such a casual flow of words, that Jungkook finds himself relaxing as he listens. It takes a few moments of silence for him to realise that Hakyeon’s stopped talking and is waiting for an answer, and also that he’s drifted over to the shelves by the desk, the ones displaying tiny, ultra expensive perfumes in plush boxes. Each one has a sample hanging beneath it, in a minuscule spray bottle, the scent a kind of golden, silken liquid inside. Jungkook’s hand is halfway to touching one of these when he hears the silence in the room. He drops his hand like it’s been slapped.

“Uh - sure. I mean, I don’t mind. Whichever. Do you - should I mind the shop or - ”

“We’ll just close up for lunch,” Hakyeon says. Jungkook knows he can’t have missed all his awkward movements. That he doesn’t mention it makes him more impressed at Hakyeon, more embarrassed at himself. Hakyeon goes to the door and flips the sign over to 'closed’, keeping his back turned for long enough that Jungkook can tuck his hands safely into his pockets.

“I can go if you want,” he says. His voice is steadier when Hakyeon isn’t looking right at him.

There it is again, that twinkling look of amusement. It’s as if Hakyeon knows something about Jungkook that Jungkook doesn’t - or that he doesn’t want to admit. It’s like Junghyun has slipped in here sometime before Jungkook ever did, and told Hakyeon all about their mother’s perfume, and the strange way Jungkook felt about scents, and Hakyeon’s just waiting for him to admit it. But not the way the boys in his class ragged on him and tried to rile him up with questions. It’s like Hakyeon wants him to admit it because then he can properly share and enjoy his wonder of a shop.

“I understand,” that look is wordlessly saying. “You don’t have to pretend to me.”

He doesn’t say anything like this, of course. He says, “Alright then, you probably could do with the fresh air,” and tells Jungkook about the bakery four doors down, where he knows a guy who’ll give them a discount, and he makes Jungkook drink some water before he leaves. The fresh air outside - which isn’t really fresh but a mingling of people, petrol, bins and cooking smells - makes Jungkook reel from its simplicity.

Simplicity is what he tells himself he wants. It’s confusing enough, being a teenager - a young man - with so much changing in his life. It’s hard enough figuring out how he feels about girls in bubblegum pink tops, without trying to figure out how he feels about her perfume. Figuring out how she would feel about his interest in her perfume is one level of complexity too many. It’s a long, dark warren of complexity which Jungkook isn’t old or experienced enough to navigate. Hakyeon seems to have sorted through all of these feelings, but Hakyeon is an adult, and a well balanced one, from what Jungkook can tell.

Jungkook is a young man, a teenager, and he’s read Perfume by Patrick Suskind. He doesn’t want to end up like that, any more than he wants to end up living in an attic and wearing his mother’s old clothes.

Oddly, it’s the same thing which causes him all of these worries which also keeps him from fleeing for home on that first day, instead of going to the bakery and buying a couple of sandwiches from Hakyeon’s friend. Worrying what his father and brother will say is what makes everything so complicated. The only thing he can imagine being worse is having to admit to both of them that he hadn’t even lasted one day at his new job.

He eats his sandwiches in companionable silence, with Hakyeon next to him thumbing through his phone, and the smell of bread and grilled chicken a simple, familiar antidote to all the exciting, frightening fragrance of the room around him. He thinks that maybe, if he keeps his thoughts away from all of those complicated feelings and just focuses on the job, he might make it through the summer.

 

After a few weeks, he’s almost mastered walking that line between what he wants and what he allows himself. He’s made some concessions to working in the shop, certainly, but only the sort which people wouldn’t easily notice, unless they’d already been looking (and smelling) for it. His skin has cleared up some since he started drinking more water and using the face wash Hakyeon suggested for him. It took another week or so for him to be talked into moisturiser, something which even in name sounds suspicious, decadently feminine and slippery. Jungkook has to admit, it’s done wonders for the gross scaly skin on his elbows. He recognises, when he catches the smell of himself, that he at least smells more adult and sophisticated, even if he still looks like a spotty teenager. He doesn’t smell feminine, or even flowery, like Hakyeon does, but he smells a lot more pleasant.

Hakyeon has been very gentle throughout all of this. He’s walked Jungkook through it as slowly as he does with his most confused male customers - yet the coaxing has never relented, however gentle it has been. Every day there’s new scents to experience; Hakyeon waits patiently for Jungkook’s stumbled assessment of them, and nods as if he’s said something insightful. Every afternoon, there’s another small suggestion: a hint dropped for an aftershave he might like to try; a sample of a new hand cream which Hakyeon dabs onto Jungkook’s palm before working the rest into his own hands. He’ll cup his hands around his nose and mouth and breathe in deeply, then look to Jungkook with a happy, expectant expression, so that Jungkook can’t avoid - can’t resist - taking his own deep breath of it.

A couple of times - and he doesn’t feel good about doing so, but it feels like scratching an illicit itch, one which he already knows will hurt to touch - he tests Hakyeon. He says what he knows some people would say: what those kids in his class would have said, when he smells something with that delicate petal dusting, the sort of fragrance which goes with bubblegum pink and shining hair in ponytails, the fragrance he imagines collects in the shadowed, intimate depths of a bosom: “It’s too girly.”

Hakyeon doesn’t frown - by the look of his forehead, he’s never frowned in his life - but he purses his lips ever so slightly, and that’s enough to make Jungkook feel ashamed of himself, for dismissing such an alluring, complicated scent as nothing but 'girly’.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Hakyeon says, with another satisfied sniff at the inside of his wrist.

Jungkook doesn’t apologise, but he recognises when he’s being taught a lesson. And it’s true that since working with Hakyeon, he’s been probing a little harder into that chain of thought which crops up every time something strikes him as too pink, too rosy, too sweet.

Why should it be bad for it to be girly, he starts to wonder. Because he’s a boy, of course, and it’s everything he should fight against. But Hakyeon is a man - a cool, adult, successful man, with his own business and plenty of friends - and he doesn’t feel the need to distance himself from anything feminine. Hakyeon brings in his home cooking for their lunch sometimes, and wears pink on a fairly regular basis, and of course he owns this shop full of scent and colour. And however many years has gone into the building of this life, none of it has emasculated Hakyeon in the slightest.

He looks at the men who come into the shop, too: the same ones he saw on that first day, and others, all of whom are unquestionably masculine by anyone’s standards. Men who even his older brother would want to look like; men with gorgeous women on their arms, wearing designer clothes and smelling of dusk, musk, and self confidence. Sometimes, they even smell like bright fruits, soft flowers; herbaceous, gentle smells which make Jungkook’s fists clench in his pockets as he tries not to imagine covering himself in the fragrance until the cuffs of his shirt are damp.

Then he’ll think again about the confused, baffled laughter of his older brother, and the shameful heat rushes over him in the same way it did back then. And he discards his thoughts, pushes the confusion to the back of his mind again and focuses on something else, like what sandwiches they’re going to have for lunch, or whether he dares hand his phone number to the cute girl who’s been in three times that week.

He thinks that Hakyeon must know about the thoughts tracking through his mind every time he’s faced with something delicious but forbidden. Hakyeon will give him a long look, filled with that repressed amusement, like he’s waiting for Jungkook to come clean with himself - with both of them. He’s too tactful to ever say anything, though, and Jungkook’s grateful for that.

By now Jungkook has graduated from stock management to being allowed to man the cash registers. One Thursday - it’s his fourth week working there, and he’s wearing the Tom Ford cologne Hakyeon had given him from a sample pack, revelling in the warm, woody scent - Hakyeon has a lunch date, and leaves Jungkook by himself for the first time.

“I’ll come back to do the cash up later,” he says, throwing on his jacket and checking his hair in the big mirror behind the till. “Just keep an eye on things - give me a call if there’s any problems.”

Jungkook vows to himself not to touch the phone. Hakyeon’s been excited about his date all day, fighting his usual tactful attempt to repress his emotions, maybe thinking it unprofessional to talk about his love life around his employees. Jungkook doesn’t mind. Hakyeon looks twice as glowing when he’s this happy, and it makes Jungkook wonder if he might meet someone who makes him feel that way, someone who puts so much warmth into his eyes that people looking at him will feel toasted through to their centre.

“I’ll be fine, don’t even think about it. Have a good time.”

“Thanks so much for minding the shop for me. It’s been ages since we’ve been able to have a lunch date. Usually we’re both home just in time to eat dinner and fall asleep.”

Hakyeon straightens out his collar, looks over his shoulder at Jungkook. There’s such delight in his eyes that it almost looks mischevious. For the first time Jungkook can see a glimpse of Hakyeon as a teenager, and he wonders if he ever felt this way: all the confusion and conflict over liking the things he did; the worry that he’d never grow up and straighten out.

Impulsively, Hakyeon holds his wrist out to Jungkook, grinning. “Can you guess what I’m wearing?”

Jungkook leans forward enough to catch a whiff: Hakyeon’s go-to citrus notes, and something a little spicy and herbaceous underneath, like cardamom. “That Issey Miyake - the new one?”

“Well done!” Hakyeon gives his own wrist one last, delighted smell, and then his eyes flicker to outside the shop window, and the smile spreads out on his face like warmed oil in an incense burner. “Oh, there he is. Alright, good luck, I’ll see you around half five.”

He doesn’t notice Jungkook’s total silence as he walks out of the shop and takes the arm of a tall, slender man in a structural tartan jacket. The door shuts behind him and Jungkook watches the couple walk away. His stomach is suddenly churning, and he feels the weight of all the fragrance in the air descend upon him. Just like when he was ten and washing sweet vanilla and peach off his hands, the scent of flowers and fruit is mocking him.

 

Hakyeon gets back exactly when he promised. Actually, he gets back a little before half five; Jungkook sees him outside the window, sharing some last muttered words and a slow kiss with the man in the tartan jacket. Jungkook hunches into his shoulders and looks away. His stomach, which hasn’t calmed down since lunchtime, ramps up its queasy rumbling.

He’s not homophobic, he reminds himself. He doesn’t have any issue with who Hakyeon wants to date, or what their gender might be. It’s just that suddenly, a lot of things are clicking into place. Things about Hakyeon, his shop, and the way he lives his life which Jungkook hadn’t known, or maybe hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, because of what it could mean for him. The pastel shirts. The amount of exceptionally good looking male friends he has, the ones who greet him with kisses on the cheek. The gentle, delicate way he handles things like confused customers, and minuscule bottles of scent.

“Hi,” Hakyeon calls, shutting the door behind him. Jungkook tries to focus on the wave of fresh air which sweeps into the shop, and not on Hakyeon, glowing and happy with a brown paper bag in one hand and his hair a little windswept. “How’s it been? Any difficulties? I brought you a cake back from lunch, we went to this adorable little cafe - ”

He stops right there, in the middle of his usual breezy chatter, when he sees Jungkook sunk in his chair behind the desk. His eyes take in everything with a practised sweep: the way Jungkook has his chin down, how he’s picking at his cuticles the way Hakyeon’s told him not to, and how he won’t look up and meet Hakyeon’s eyes. Jungkook can smell the happiness fade out of the room. The shop doesn’t smell like an enchanted cave any more. It smells like a tangled and confused mess. His stomach hurts like he’s been drinking perfume instead of smelling it.

“What’s up?” Hakyeon asks, ever so carefully.

Jungkook wishes he could be like that, tactful and adult and considered. But he’s a teenager, and all he can do is blurt out, “You didn’t tell me you were gay.”

The careful air dissipates faster than a cheap air freshener. When Hakyeon speaks, there’s a steely edge to his voice which Jungkook has never heard before. “Is that a problem for you?”

Very, very slowly, Jungkook looks up. Hakyeon is drawn to his full height, the wind-whipped redness in his cheeks and his intent eyes giving him a near infernal appearance. All that composition and considerations is being put towards something other than making people feel comfortable. Jungkook has never felt so uncomfortable in his life.

“No,” he chokes out, “it’s just - I didn’t mean anything, I just - all of this…”

“All of what?” Hakyeon prompts. Jungkook’s entire insides coil about in agony like they’re trying to climb up his throat and stopper his stupid, clumsy mouth.

“All of this - all the scents and the - and you always look so good and - I thought - I thought - ”

Just when he thinks he’s pressed himself hard enough into the chair that his skin might start to fuse with it, and the heat in his cheeks feels like it’s going to set his fringe alight - Hakyeon laughs.

Jungkook almost makes the one hundred and eighty flip from desperately ashamed to furious. Instead, the tension in his spine dissolves and he flops forward onto the desk, groaning, head in his hands. “Sorry, I’m - sorry, God, I’m - I didn’t mean - what’s funny?”

Hakyeon peels his jacket off, pushes aside some of the clutter on the desk and perches on the edge of it. Jungkook can feel him looking down: the irritation gone, just his usual warm, knowing expression. His citrus, spicy scent creeps through the bland stench of embarrassment which is all Jungkook can recognise. He puts down a hand to Jungkook’s shoulder, gives him a squeeze.

“Oh dear,” he says, in exactly the way Jungkook’s mother says it when he’s done something monumentally stupid, like trying to boil an egg in the microwave. “I think we need to have a little chat.”

He turns the shop sign around to closed, and makes them both a herb tea, and sits there on the desk until Jungkook’s recovered himself enough to sit up almost straight.

“I don’t care,” Jungkook mumbles, watching the tea bag bob around in purplish water. “Really, I - it doesn’t matter, I just - my brother always - I mean, he never said but, when I was a kid - it was just embarrassing and I always - I didn’t want…”

He’s not making sense and he knows it, and with his usual tact Hakyeon doesn’t point this out. He keeps sitting there, hands cupped around his mug, waiting and nodding until, bit by bit, the whole story scrambles its way out.

When he’s done, Jungkook chances a look up at Hakyeon. He’s smiling, but not in that repressed, knowing way as before. It’s a smile as soft and gentle as the most whispering floral scent in the shop. He nods and puts his mug down on the desk beside him, and it’s like fresh air - real fresh air, unflavoured by bins and cars - sweeps into Jungkook’s constricted lungs. With a sigh, he manages to sit back properly in his chair.

“I had a feeling you’d been a bit confused about working here.”

“I just. I like it here, I really do. I just don’t - don’t know if I should.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” Hakyeon lets this breathy little noise escape his nose; this time it sounds like he’s laughing at himself. “I know, I know. It’s difficult being seventeen. All those expectations, trying to figure out who you are. You’re a smart kid, too. That just makes it more difficult to navigate everything. More ideas to get caught up in.” He pauses again, and this time it’s him who looks down at his hands, turning them palms up like he’s reading his own life line. “You can talk to me any time, you know. I know you just work for me, and if you’d like this to just be a job, I understand. But I remember being your age. It’s not easy. It was never my intention to make things more difficult for you.”

“No,” Jungkook says straight away. If everything else is tangled and baffling, this at least is clear. “No, you’ve not - it’s just me. It’s just - I don’t know how to feel about any of this.”

Hakyeon hums, kicking his foot a little against the desk. “You said yourself, plenty of men come to shop here. Didn’t that help, even a little?”

“Yes,” Jungkook says, and then, feeling as dumb as a child, “no. I mean, yeah, but they’re all, like, adults, and they’re all well off and good looking, and - I dunno, it’s easier when you’re like that.”

“They weren’t always like that,” Hakyeon says softly. “I wasn’t always like I am now. We were all confused teenagers at one stage. Being an adult isn’t about being well dressed, or wealthy. Part of it is learning to accept what you love - and who you love. If nice scents and soft clothes make you feel good, there’s nothing wrong with embracing that. If you stunt yourself because of what other people might say, part of you always stays a kid, waiting in the playground for someone to laugh at you.”

There’s not much Jungkook can say to this, so he fiddles with his fingers and keeps quiet.

“Listen,” Hakyeon says, finally getting up from the desk and picking up his jacket. “Would your parents mind if you came to mine for dinner? You don’t have to, but I have something I’d like to show you.”

 

Hakyeon’s place is a ten minute walk from the shop. After a quick call home, thankfully answered by his mother (even after this conversation, Jungkook doesn’t feel like explaining to his dad why he’s going to an older man’s house for dinner) they make their way there. The flat is on the fifth floor: a long, narrow space, full of mirrors and interestingly placed lights which make it look bigger than it is. Of course it smells delightful, like freshly squeezed lemons and oranges, a fading hint of brewing coffee, and the sharp, cool scent of the big mint plant in the kitchen. Jungkook toes off his shoes and follows Hakyeon through to the living room.

There, slung across the sofa, is the dark haired man he’d met for lunch, now in a cosy grey hoodie instead of his tartan jacket. He glances up when they enter, following his smile at Hakyeon with a rather sharper look for Jungkook. He has the same poise, the same intent eyes as Hakyeon, but his sloping eyebrows and high cheekbones make him look much more forbidding. Jungkook looks down at his socks and tries not to shrink into himself.

“You’re late in,” the man says. “Isn’t this your shop assistant?”

“It’s not what you think,” Hakyeon laughs. He crosses to the sofa and kisses the man on the cheek. “This is Jungkook. Jungkook, I’d like you to meet my partner Kibum.”

“Is this what you wanted me to see?” Jungkook blurts out. He’s still reeling from seeing such a comfortable domestic display between two men, but both of them just smile at him.

“Not this. Let me get my things out - honey, you don’t mind if we have dinner a bit later?”

“Sure. I’ve got some work to finish anyway. Just don’t get wax on the hob this time.”

Jungkook has just enough time to be utterly and totally baffled, and to wonder for a fleeting moment if Hakyeon’s going to take his beauty regime one step further and teach him how to wax his chest, before everything is set up in the kitchen: a row of essential oils in squat brown bottles; a big saucepan; a jar full of strings, and a sack of waxy nuggets. Jungkook immediately dips his hand into this bag, satisfied at the slippery texture and the cool, neutral smell which hits him.

“What’s all this for?”

“I thought you’d like to learn how to make candles.”

Together, they mix and heat and pour, until the hob is covered with drips of wax and the whole kitchen smells like some kind of alchemical cocktail: spiced orange and vanilla mingling with cinnamon; candied rose curling around solid oak; sandalwood and jasmine sliced through with clean, medicinal tea tree. Jungkook straightens out the wick of his finished product with a careful fingernail, and only then realises that his head isn’t spinning. He isn’t overwhelmed by the scents surrounding him, or by the joy which accompanies every breath, or by any lingering confusion. All he feels is pride in what he’s created, and a pleasant, quiet calm after two hours of intense, focused work.

“There,” Hakyeon says, and throws an arm around Jungkook’s shoulders. “Now you leave it to set. I’ll bring it in for you tomorrow.”

“I don’t - I mean - ” He makes himself stop, and lets the calm soak through him before he speaks again. It’s not something he’s experienced much, waiting for his words to assemble themselves before he starts to talk. This must be what it’s like to be Hakyeon, he realises. He notices, when he does speak, how he sounds more adult: more considered, as if he knows who he is and what he’s trying to express. “I’d like to do this again. It’s cool, creating stuff like this. Especially when it’s stuff you really like.”

“Everyone needs a way to express themselves. Everyone deserves to do things which make them happy. Once you start learning not to be ashamed of it, that’s when you really start to grow.”

Jungkook picks up his candle, gingerly bringing it to his nose to smell, careful of the unset wax. It’s a bouquet of flowers: iris and jasmine over a background of sweet vanilla and hints of peach. It’s a bit muddled, but Jungkook likes it, and Hakyeon assures him he’ll learn to balance scents the more he works on it.

“Thanks.” This time he doesn’t feel like he needs to say anything else. Hakyeon gives him a one-armed hug.

“Right. Help me get this place cleared up before my darling boyfriend kicks my ass, and then we’ll have some dinner. Your mum should be pleased with that candle.”

Jungkook puts it down on the side and takes another deep breath of the wild, intermingled air. It smells like something bright and upcoming, for all its confusion. “Actually, you can keep this one. To, y'know. Say thanks.”

It’s the first time in their short acquaintanceship that Jungkook has seen Hakyeon not just tactfully silent, but actually lost for words. Then he smiles: a little bashful, and extremely pleased. “Any time.”


End file.
